Oculus

Atki took a moment to breathe, his willowy frame trembling. It took him a while before he could control his breathing and he opened his scarlet eyes. He looked up at Enola, who stared down at him patiently. The cat exhaled a shaky breath, “Who is Calypso?”

Enola looked like she'd been punched in the gut. Her expression couldn't be hidden, no matter how she tried. She looked away from the two at the mouth of the cave, trying to hold back tears, as the moments she spent with the Felecetii crowded her mind like the ghosts of her past. She took a deep breath, turning her face back to them.

“Calypso. My soul mate, my closest friend... She's no longer with us.”

“What happened to her?” Atki's voice was weak, his tone hushed. His brain felt like it had swelled in his skull; the pain was raw and nearly unbearable. He knelt on the ground, unable to force himself from the floor of the cave. But he stared up at Enola as the question floated around in the air. Enola seemed to take a moment.

“Asher... killed her. He's the human who nearly ran you down when you first saw me.”

“Why did he kill her?"

Enola breathed, focusing on leveling her voice and chilling her expression, “She got in his way.”

Atki was silent. He stared at Enola before he spoke, “I'm sorry.”

“You are not at fault, Atki. Don't apologize for Asher.”

The silence stretched out between the three for a few moments. Atki glanced over at Muhlsaan, his mystical eye still pouring his ebony blood. It dripped from the side of his face and sprinkled the ground beneath him, staining the rocks. “Muhlsaan... I think... I think something's wrong.”

As soon as the words passed from Atki's lips, his pupil rolled into the back of his head. The blood painted the side of his face, a stark contrast to the color of his fur. Atki fell off to his side, hitting the ground without any resistance. When he went down, all was silent, and Enola broke her illusion in her shock. She, in the blink of an eye, became what she truly was. “Atki?”

“Atki! Wake up!” Muhlsaan quickly went to Atki's side and lifted him off the ground. “We have to do something Enola, he's bleeding out. The eye is killing him.”

They repositioned him into a leaning position against the wall of the cave. His breathing was shallow but steady--his pulse was rapid, but strong. Both Enola and the wizard began using their own methods of healing on Atki. Enola used some herbs she had gathered on her trip and placed them into the mouth of the Felecetii.

“These herbs should alleviate the pain he's feeling and help his blood clot properly, anything you can conjure up Muhlsaan? Is he going to be okay?” She looked desperately at the man, whom was almost as unsure as she was.

“He should be okay, his heart is strong and the Great One wouldn't send him on his way to die in a cave, his visions are destroying him--or appear to be. His eye has been giving him great pain, his body may be rejecting it.” But why would he reject it? This question was replaying through Muhlsaan's mind, what was happening here? What was really going on?

This quest, the spirits, the people they've met. What was the purpose or ultimate goal? Merely the succession of power? A tired spirit wanting the one thing mortals had and they didn't-- death? Why, now, was the magic backfiring? Why Atki's health was failing he didn't understand in the slightest, he was supposed to acquire the powers of a god, not wither and die in a cave.

For now, Atki was okay. Still deep asleep, he hadn't moved since he had fallen. “I think I can reach him in his coma.” Muhlsaan produced the scrying orb, gently palming it after wiping away dust with his sleeve. “If he is dreaming, I will meet him. The spirit told me I had to teach Atki to harness his strengths, maybe this is the way. I will dreamwalk and guide him.”

He paused, “Protect us while we dream, Enola. Please.”

Muhlsaan took a step back from Atki and counted to himself “1... 2.... 3!” He suddenly and violently flung the orb at the ground between him and the boy. The room was filled with a blinding white light that collapsed within itself, pulling his mind into the orb as it fell lifeless to the floor. 

Muhlsaan was, in that instance, transported to a strange realm he couldn't fully interpret. He was still phasing into this realm and he was formless for the time being. Muhlsaan was always disoriented in the dream world--always functioning as a phantasm of sorts instead of a physical being.

It truly was a dream, one he very well could remain trapped in, if he allowed himself to be overtaken by the beings that often lurked in this realm. Very few knew that the dreamworld was an actual realm sleepers were taken and even fewer mages were left that knew of this place. Those that had been found dead, passing in their sleep, without any health problems or signs of poison or infliction, usually were dreamers lost in this realm.

Those lost souls become envious of dreamers and attempt to follow them back into the waking world. In a dream there is no clear concept of time and the realm reflected this. Souls that had only just become lost could have been there for a millenia, or for mere seconds- it didn't matter. 

The insanity and depravity consumed them immediately when they realized their bodies in the waking world were destroyed by time, or entombed and unreachable in the grave. The torment of these lost dreamers consumed them utterly and caused them, in their grief, to attack and seize other dreamers not yet lost. Sometimes out of jealousy and sometimes with the intention of taking the place of the dreamer. Taking their body for themselves, allowing them another chance at life. This vicious cycle had made this dream world the dangerous place it had become or always had been outside of time.

Muhlsaan would tread carefully, for in this world every spirit possessed magic and every soul was drawn to power. Ancient mages attempted to ascend to immortal lichdom through this world, binding portions of their soul to this place; many of those fragments remained and would be eager to bind to a powerful host like him. In his travels he had come to know the landscape and it's inhabitants; he feared for Atki's life.

Eventually, though not all at once, Muhlsaan began to see the grass sprout forth from his feet and stretch out onto the horizon. Then came the silhouettes of the rock formations that were set up in a perfect circle. His vision began to clear until he saw the stone's gray color and the texture of the slate. Within the circle, the wizard was straining to see, but he thought he saw a tree growing from the soil. It grew at an unnatural rate as it spun around itself to climb up to the pitch black sky; it's spindly branches reached toward the heavens. It grew no leaves and the mystic noticed that it had begun to bleed ebony from underneath the bark. It was difficult to see in the thick, dark atmosphere of the area.

Suddenly, there was a great boulder that had seemingly come from nowhere underneath the tree. Muhlsaan had blinked and it had burst into existence before him. He blinked once again in his surprise and then, there was Atki. He sat, cross-legged, on the face of the boulder. His hood was pulled up over his face and in his hand, he held something. It pulsed energy, an energy that was tainted vermilion, and had a powerful surge. Muhlsaan could almost feel the pulsations. The wizard waited a moment before he took a tentative step forward, following one of the paths to the arches; the grass was shorter and winded up to the stone erratically.

“Atki? What is that?” The mystic asked as he approached the Felecetii, attempting to look at what was in his hand and yet never being able to see it. He was apprehensive, was this truly Atki? Was it an illusion? A spirit masquerading as the cat? He didn't know, but he was going to find out. He wasn't a stranger to the stranger things in the dream world, though nothing so strange has happened in his recent memory.

The cat, slowly, turned his head from the object he was holding in his ivory paw. He stared up at the wizard, his injured eye missing from it's socket and the hole where it should have been gushing midnight. Atki was silent for a moment and then he opened his hand further, raising it up slightly to present it to Muhlsaan. The wizard was shocked because, in Atki's hand, was the scarlet eye that should have been in his head.

“What have you done?” He gasped.

“I didn't do anything.” Atki spoke as he slid down from the boulder and landed on the grass beneath him. He turned to Muhlsaan with the orb in his hand, his expression was grim. The Felecetii stood there for what seemed like an eternity before speaking. “I hear this voice, Muhlsaan.”

“A voice...?”

“It sounds like... the White One. It's telling me... it's telling me to show you.”

“Show me what, Atki?”

“Please forgive me.”

Atki didn't hesitate. He unsheathed the claws of his unoccupied hand and he plunged his fingers into Muhlsaan's eye socket. He ripped out the eye that rested there, savagely, but systematically. Atki crushed the mystic's eye in his paw and, with the hand that held the vermilion orb, he popped the enigma into Muhlsaan's skull. Once he did, he took a step away, his hands wet with the human's crimson.